Recent Writing
Letter of Recommendation: Filet-O-Fish (NYT Mag, March 2021)
The Unsettling Surveillance of Anti-Asian Racism (The Verge, March 2021)
Said by Said: Review of Timothy Brennan's Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said (Bookforum, Mar/Apr/May 2021)
Punctuation After Trump (Harpers, Feb 2021)
The Sense of an Ending: Review of José Esteban Muñoz's The Sense of Brown (Bookforum, Dec/Jan/Feb 2021)
One Weird Trick: Review of Sianne Ngai's Theory of the Gimmick (Bookforum, Sept/Oct/Nov 2020)
Cultural Criticism
The Queen's Gambit as Bad Period Piece (Vulture, Nov 2020)
The New Mulan's Uncomfortable Relationship with China's Past and Present (TheNewYorker.com, Sept 2020)
The Second Act of Social Media Activism (TheNewYorker.com, Aug 2020)
Severance and Coronavirus (The Ringer, Mar 2020)
Sally Rooney's Great Millennial Novels (The Ringer, Apr 2019)
Claire Foy Season and Comparative Empires (The Ringer, Nov 2018)
The "Inscrutable" Voices of Asian-Anglophone Fiction (The New Yorker, 2017)
Between Us: A Queer Theorist's Devoted Husband and Enduring Legacy (The New Yorker, Dec 2015)
A Complete History of Gerbiling So Far (The Awl, Nov 2012)
Gerhard Richter is a Famous Painter of Expensive Paintings (The Awl, May 2012)
Reality Hunger: On Lena Dunham's Girls (LARB, Apr 2012)
The Times as Tardy Leader and the History of Women's Suffrage (The Awl, Jun 2011)
Race & Pop Culture
Race and Romantic Realism in Sally Rooney (Post45 Contemporaries, June 2020)
Tigertail Brings Decades of Asian Cinema to the Mainstream (The Ringer, Apr 2020)
What Food Means to The Farewell (The Ringer, Jul 2019)
2018 Was a Breakthrough Year for Asians in Hollywood--but Not at the Oscars (The Ringer, Jan 2019)
Crazy Rich Asians, Black Panther, and the Difficulties of Hollywood Representation (The Ringer, Aug 2018)
"Yi-Fen Chou" Poetry Scandal Goes Beyond "Yellowface" (The Guardian, Sep 2014)
Books
New Story Collections Reconsider History (New York Times Review of Books, Nov 2020)
Cathy Park Hong's personal history of Asian America (The Nation, May 2020)
The Revolution of Everyday Life (Bookforum, Fall 2019)
Wilkie Collins and the first detective novel (Bookforum, Summer 2019)
Ling Ma's Severance: The Office at the End of the World (The New Republic, Oct 2018)
Shirley Jackson's Disappearing Act (The New Republic, Sep 2016)
A Maeve Brennan Revival (The New Yorker, 2014)
Caleb Crain's Necessary Errors: Nothing Happens, Deliberately (Slate, Aug 2013)
Something in the Act of Becoming: On Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies (LARB, Aug 2012)
Film
2020 and the Year of the Female Superhero (The Ringer, Feb 2020)
Gemini Man's High-Tech Heart (Slate, Oct 2019)
The Brilliance of Emma Thompson (The Ringer, Jul 17, 2019)
Captain Marvel and the Female Superhero (The Ringer, Mar 2019)
The Favourite and Emma Stone (The Ringer, Feb 2019)
TV
Why Corporate's Office Satire Falls Flat (The New Republic, Jan 2018)
Occasional Corgis: The Crown's Canine Politics (LARB, Dec 2017)
Catastrophe Season Two: Is There Life After the Rom-Com? (The New Republic, April 2016)
Nathan For You, So Dumb It's Brilliant (The New Republic, Oct 2015)
You're the Worst and the Rom-Com (The New Republic, Sep 2015)
Dear Television archive (LARB, Sep 2012 - present)
Theory Porn
The Narrative of Class and Race in Chris Kraus's Summer of Hate (Bookslut, Feb 2013)
Theory Porn (The New Inquiry, Nov 2012)
Cat Marnell: No Epiphanies Whatsover (The New Inquiry, Aug 2012)
Horror
Velvet Buzzsaw and Art World Film Satires (The Ringer, Feb 2019)
Mommy Issues and Horror Films (The Ringer, Dec 2018)
How A Simple Favor and Searching Reimagine the Mystery Movie (The Ringer, Sep 2018)
Can Horror Movies be Prestigious? (The Ringer, Jun 2018)
Pop Music
Lorde & Melodrama On Loop (The Hairpin, Jun 2017)
Why JoJo Matters (The Hairpin, Sep 2015)
Mariah Carey, Pervert and Genius with Jen Vafidis (The Hairpin, Apr 2015)
Carly Rae Jepsen with Jen Vafidis (The Hairpin, Mar 2015)
One Direction, Best Album Ever (The Hairpin, Nov 2013)
Interviews
Rinko Kikuchi brings Japan to Westworld (GQ, May 2018)
Talking with Choire Sicha and Caleb Crain about their new books (Pacific Standard, Jun 2017)
An Interview with Alexander Chee (The Awl, Feb 2016)
Personal
Circling the Block (NYT Styles, 2020)
Dear Television vs the Psychometric Personality Quiz (LARB, Apr 2020)
Occasional Corgis: The Crown's Canine Politics (LARB, Dec 2017)
That One Time I Got Into Basketball (Hazlitt, Jun 2015)
All in My Head (The Awl, Dec 2014)
I'm Nobody: Eve Sedgwick After Death (The Awl, May 2013)